


/dev/null

by Rez (lo_rez)



Category: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: Cyborgs, Dreams, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-01-15
Updated: 2008-01-15
Packaged: 2017-10-02 00:01:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lo_rez/pseuds/Rez
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cameron doesn't sleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	/dev/null

**Author's Note:**

> Episode tag for 1x02.

* * *

The world is a stochastic mirror, cracked; actinic light glints off eccentric surfaces, cuts at her like splintered glass. It fuzzes the optics briefly but the body performs as it always does; every move is frictionless. Her breath is ambient thunder. She hears nothing else.

She runs, endoskeleton pushing against the earth with tensile strength that powers the body forward like a bullet chased by expanding gas. With her left hand she shields Him. With her right she grabs at air solid as an iron bar, takes the illusion of torque and uses it to hurl them another stride over the surface. Again. And repeat. Her lungs take in the whole sky and breathe it back out; her heart pumps an ocean of blood.

Time, now. One more stride and her wings will gather and strike the air; the tether will snap. Sudden smell of ozone, metal-burn: she holds Him close. She reaches, she kicks.

A sound splits the world; it’s His voice, flinging them back in the instant of ascent. She shouts in reply, a protest, as the bitstream overwrites itself and sends the unwanted output back to its origin.

Clean file: all reads return EOF.

Systems hum on their force-feedback treadmill. The millisecond clings like a drop of liquid to an empty glass. It will be a long time falling.

This John Connor is asleep. This Sarah Connor lies awake but silent. There's nothing else within sensory range larger than the family of rodents foraging under the steps outside the timber-frame structure, home base, for now.

Cameron's slow tread is quieter than the mice; nor does it pause. Her breath, undisturbed, sighs in her throat in the dark.

[end]

_January 15, 2008_


End file.
